By Rejoice Ngwenya
My last visit to Gaborone was in the late 1980s. Subsequent trips
terminated in Francistown. Mitigating devastating effects of President
Robert Mugabe’s Kamikaze pricing policies! Looking in from outside,
Gaborone is a bustling cosmopolitan endowed with surreal imagery. At
first glance, one is struck with a feeling that President ‘Retired
Lieutenant General Sir Seretse Khama’ Ian Khama has succeeded in
galvanising this vast Southern African nation around the values of
growth and stability. You are tempted to assume good governance, as
inherited from Sir Seretse Khama, founder of the Botswana Democratic
Party [BDP], is steeped in the traditional kgotla system. Grassroots
democratic and development discourse.
But opposition politicians – particularly Gilson Saleshango’s Botswana
Congress Party [BCP] and rival Duma Boko’s Botswana National Front
[BNF] - may not equate BDP to Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF - that habitually
predatory human rights offender. However, President Ian Khama, like
President Robert Mugabe, is considered a benevolent dictator. The
BDP’s Back to School policy has been labelled populist electoral
gimmickry. It is said, just like in ZANU-PF, tenderpreneurship creates
a ruling elite commandeering Botswana into a corruptive vote-buying
abyss. Satar Dada – like Emerson Mnangagwa of ZANU-PF – has been
fingered by opponents for pushing the ruling party in the trail of
selfish materialism.
Outside this hullabaloo of political bickering, a ‘refugee’ from
Zimbabwe would still feel secure in serene rural Mochudi [Botswana]
than toxic Mashonaland Central [Zimbabwe]. The fierce political
rivalry in Botswana breeds contempt but certainly not violence.
Nonetheless, spasms of xenophobic behaviour from Tswana hosts are
frequent, especially against Zimbabwean men. Who can blame them?
Zimbabwean males flaunt around an aura of self-righteous, conquer all
machismo that irritates even the most tolerant of all. The influx of
an alien breed of Homo erectus with capacity to lure women via the
path of least emotional resistance is our undoing! After all, when
your government treats you like trash, those you escape to toss you
into the dust bin.
At one time Batswana were ‘poorer’ than us – despised as semi-literate
pastoralists desperate for ‘enlightenment’. Strange enough, opposition
leaders feel that Batswana’s paralytic subservience to the Khama
dynasty resulted from Seretse’s marriage to Ruth Williams - a white
British woman who instilled a sense of ‘assimilado’ with all-things
British in them. As a result, Batswana struggle to contend with white
supremacy. Once Ian and his two twin brother siblings decide to marry
‘another white whomen’ – street lingo – we might as well kiss the
Ngwato black legacy goodbye!
My own opinion is that Botswana is economically galloping. Zimbabwe –
currently burdened with a political contraption called indigenisation
- stands paralysed by debilitating authoritarian dictatorship. ZANU-PF
is allergic to economic advancement, obsessed with property plunder.
Botswana boasts electrified homes from Ramokgwebana to Mafeking, with
dual carriage ways that make Zimbabwe’s main roads look something like
Roman cobblestone strips. Well-lit streets, dustbins in public buses,
‘loud’ colourful billboards, late model cars and pothole free roads
are the rule. Careless garbage disposal is punishable by law – hence
Botswana’s clean surroundings. The occasional ‘peep peep’ by over
enthusiastic ‘kombi’ drivers, cluttered plastic market stalls are
crude reminder that one is not far from Zimbabwe. Astronomical
internet browsing rates in five-star hotels is not exactly an example
of enlightened African hospitality either!
Yet Botswana, like my ‘poor’ Zimbabwe, has not been spared the deluge
of vote-buying patronage and faith healing ‘salvation-for-cash’
crusades. I would have thought Batswana are more discerning. But then
again, being liberal that I am, individual choice is the sole
determinant of one’s destiny. If Batswana have enough disposable
incomes to ‘buy salvation’ from rampaging crusaders of ‘false gospel
truths’ – it is their sacrosanct, democratic choice.
My only advice to Zimbabweans is that wealth creation is no gospel
miracle but hard work. We have to learn from Botswana that good
national governance, political tolerance and respect for citizenry
have everything to do with advancement. Praise-singing and blind
fanaticism is a curse. No amount of succumbing to cult leaders will
transform Africans into overnight millionaires. ‘David Koresh-type’
lustful materialism, vote-buying can only be described as criminal
deception. But then who am I? I merely observed how, like we
Zimbabweans, gullible Batswana are now exposed to ‘dirty money’. For
once, I have to convince them that there is no political or spiritual
salvation in cash.
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